Month: March 2021

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Defendants Benefit from Our Allegiance to the Courts

Day in Court

Day in Court

When you’re in jail, the bail bond company you choose matters.

While the “nuts and bolts” of being arrested and jailed are the same in Cobb County, DeKalb County, Fulton County and Gwinnett County, how a jail and its systems functions can be very different. “Because we know, in detail, how each county’s judicial system works, we can explain what to expect to our customers,” A 2nd Chance founder and CEO Daniel Matalon said. “Many of them do not have attorneys and need help navigating the system. We are happy to share our knowledge with them during this uncomfortable time.”

The pandemic has caused a great number of Atlanta area residents to lose their jobs. Many have moved to a different part of town or even relocated to another state to find work. While leaving the area can be justified, defendants who fail to update the courts on their current locations can find themselves in legal jeopardy if they miss appearance notices, court date updates and other important case-related paperwork. Consider the defendant who has moved for a new job and has a new address. The court, which likely has the defendant’s old address on file, will send the court date notice there. Once the notice is forwarded, it is not likely that the defendant will receive it in time to make the court date. Every defendant has a legal obligation to stay informed about pending court dates. Not receiving the notice to appear is indefensible from the court’s perspective. Miss a court date and you can expect the court to issue a warrant for your failure to appear. Once the warrant is issued, you will be immediately arrested.

Because these notices are also sent to the defendant’s attorney on record and bail bond company, A 2nd Chance has added a step into its process to help ensure that its customers are in court as ordered. The company places a phone call in advance of the court date to alert the defendant to the pending appearance. This system works so well that, in a five-year period, 72% of the company’s defendants appeared in court when ordered.

You might be surprised to learn your bail bond company choice can matter down the road, too. A bail bonds company with strong ties to local judicial systems can continue to help you even after your legal challenges are handled and concluded.

“We maintain the utmost confidentiality of our customers’ information, and we don’t release information without a court order. However, we maintain strong relationships with the court system and they sometimes ask us for help,” explained Matalon.

Matalon recounted a recent experience when U.S. Marshals wanted to talk to a former customer, who they thought might have information pertinent to a current case. Once he found out why the marshals wanted to talk with his former client, he was able to contact the former client who agreed to talk with the marshals.

Just as our working relationships with the courts are important to representing our clients well, A 2nd Chance has also built strong alliances with local law enforcement as well. To that end, we’d like to congratulate the newly elected slate of judicial and law enforcement officials who took office in January, including:

  • Cobb County’s District Attorney Flynn Broady, Sheriff Craig Owens and District 2 Commissioner Jerica Richardson
  • DeKalb County Sheriff Melody Maddox
  • Fulton County’s Sheriff Patrick “Pat” Labat-Sheriff and District Attorney Fani Willis
  • Gwinnett County Sheriff Keybo Taylor

A 2nd Chance Bail Bonds remains at the ready to assist you and your clients around the clock. We are in our offices every day to serve you personally, and we can also process bail bonds electronically.

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From Down and Out to Up and Coming—the Miraculous Recovery of A 2nd Chance Bail Bonds President, Daniel Matalon

In the late 1990s, when Daniel Matalon was a teenager, he began a drug habit that could have destroyed his life. Instead, after a succession of failed treatment attempts, he found a recovery center that worked—and in the process discovered his entrepreneurial spirit. That spirit, along with business mentoring from a family friend, enabled Matalon to turn his life completely around. Today, instead of using drugs, he helps substance abusers and others who violate the law through his company, A 2nd Chance Bail Bonds. In the 10 years since its founding, A 2nd Chance Bail Bonds has grown into a multi-million dollar firm, all because of one man’s determination—and a 2nd chance.

The Downward Spiral Begins

When Matalon began taking drugs at 15, he never imagined he would end up having a stroke due to drug use, or have six friends die of overdoses. As with many drug users, his habit had begun with marijuana and escalated over time. By the time he was 21, he had attended a string of schools, failed three residential rehab attempts and relapsed after five opiate detox efforts. His mother asked him to leave the family home and told him, “Call me when you get it together.” Facing rock bottom, Matalon found a treatment facility in Florida that would become the first step toward his new life. “Whatever you tell me to do, I’ll do it,” Matalon told the counselors at the facility. First, they prescribed a non-traditional treatment that sent Matalon to St. Kitts for a period. Then, recognizing his strong tendency towards relapse and the role that long-term treatment plays in meaningful recovery, they referred him to the Talbot Recovery Campus in Atlanta.

A New Beginning

In 2004, after eight months at Talbot, Matalon was released. Living with a roommate he met in treatment, Matalon began the cautious journey back to being a productive member of society. “I knew I had reached the final ‘get your life together’ moment,” says Matalon. “This was my last opportunity.” Initially, Matalon worked in landscaping and the hotel industry before meeting a Gwinnett County bail bondsman and landing a job with him. Matalon stayed at the bail bond firm for two years, learning the business from the ground up and, in the process, becoming the top agent. During that time, he realized that he loved being a bail bondsman—helping others who had been accused of crimes keep their lives together while they awaited trial. However, he didn’t like the way most bonding businesses were run. They were detached, money-focused operations where the accused weren’t given much respect. Matalon wanted to start a company with a new approach—a friendly, helpful bonding firm where both employees and clients were treated like family. Matalon’s dreams were big—and so was the price tag for achieving them. Bail bonding firms need at least $250,000 in start-up capital, and who, he thought, would loan that kind of money to “a screw up”? Matalon approached a potential investor, a longtime friend of Daniel’s late father and the man Daniel considered his “second Dad.” His second Dad did the last thing anyone expected—he agreed to loan Matalon the entire $250,000 to get started. Then he introduced Matalon to Tim Fulton, a business expert who would help him define his brand, create a business plan, and take the other necessary steps to promote success. From the beginning, A 2nd Chance Bail Bonds focused on bringing a new attitude to the bail bonding business—one that is personable, efficient and friendly. “We’re not here to pass judgment. Our clients have been accused, not tried and found guilty,” Matalon says. “I try to make it easy on the clients. More than anything, most of them just need some normalcy in life. They need to have travel plans approved, and we help them with that.” Today, A 2nd Chance Bail Bonds has 25 employees in three locations and Matalon is considering a national expansion. Fulton continues to consult with the organization, and Matalon not only has repaired relations with his family; he has been happily married for more than a decade, and has two children of his own. “I’ve been to the depths of the dark side. I was living in it,” Matalon concludes. “Then, I found my 2nd chance. We want to help our clients find one, too.”

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The Legal Landscape One Year into the Pandemic

Rolling Over to 2021

Rolling Over to 2021

Most years are filled with celebrations – birthdays, holidays, anniversaries and other milestone events. For the last year, we’ve had to come up with new ways to mark these milestones –  without traditional celebrations, without loved ones, with masks and from a distance.

Now, we are at another significant juncture – one year into the most pervasive global pandemic in recent times. It’s been one turn around the sun since COVID-19 arrived in America. More than 500,000 of us have succumbed and 20 million Americans have been vaccinated.

As we move into the thirteenth month of the COVID-19 pandemic, the legal landscape continues to mirror the U.S. economy in some ways and outshine it in others. Service industries, such as restaurants, bars and hotels, were hit hard with unemployment rising nationwide. The same result is seen on the legal front where recent law school graduates seem to be impacted the most.

Freshly minted attorneys who had just passed the bar faced rescinded job offers and those lucky enough to keep their offers were met with delayed start dates from the fall to the first of the year. Established attorneys who survived layoffs faced changes in compensation.

Those on the periphery of the legal market suffered as well when the demand for new and additional legal office cratered and existing leases were renegotiated. In fact, the trend towards smaller-footprint law offices has been fast-forwarded by as much as ten years.

However, other services firms focused on the legal market are expecting to see an ongoing increase in demand – information technology companies. At first, newly remote lawyers and staff members needed help to set up connected home offices. By now, the technology-related cost of equipping the at-home workforce has passed. What’s coming, however, could be more daunting and certainly more expensive as legal firms put advanced cybersecurity in place to protect against breaches of confidential information. Additionally, the makeshift video legal proceeding, first thought to be a temporary inconvenience, has become ubiquitous. Socially distanced lawyers are managing through these new virtual legal proceedings, sometimes with ease and sometimes as cats.

Despite the negatives, the remote legal workforce kicked into high gear in the past year, generating record revenues for some firms. The nation’s top 50 firms increased revenues by 7.6% in the first nine months of 2020. However, smaller firms posted more sluggish financial results.

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